Putting on a big
show, southern
yellow-billed horn
bills-small at just
18 inches from bill
to tail-defend their
40-acre territory in
Kruger National Park
from encroachment
by others of their
own kind. Their
clucking calls rise in
volume and tempo.
At the climax the pair
raise and fan out
their wings and tails,
bowing in unison,
their world secure
-for the moment.
exuding bundles of filaments that flutter in
the wind. Suddenly there is a great thrashing
and snapping of branches in the foliage; I see
Boonma's face tighten, then relax. We have
disturbed a six-foot-long monitor lizard,
which has chosen to depart the area.
Over dinner that evening Pilai discusses the
plight of the Thai hornbills. There is little to
be done about habitat constriction, she says.
It has already taken place-less than 25 percent
of Thailand's original forest remains.
Pilai does what she can about poaching. One
of her study areas in the south, where villagers
hunted hornbill chicks for food and money,
posed a challenge.
"Black marketeers will
pay around one thousand dollars for a white
crowned hornbill chick," she says, referring to
one of the rarest of the region's birds. "That's
six months' income for a villager who works on
a rubber plantation." But the persuasive Pilai
mounted a public relations offensive, appeal
ing to the villagers' sense of place, heritage, and
family. "If you keep taking the chicks, the
birds will die out, and your children will never
see them," she emphasized. "Would you want
yourselves to die out?"
Thinking he might get some money from
Pilai, one crafty villager said, "We will bring the
chicks to you." Pilai responded, "If you bring
chicks to me, I will bring the policeman to
you!" The villagers have stopped the practice
and now participate with enthusiasm as agents
in Pilai's foundation, which has, she informs
me, a hornbill adoption program.
"For $120 you can adopt a hornbill for one
year," she says. "A villager will tend the nest,
and we will send you pictures and report on
the bird's behavior, what it is doing, what it is
eating, its family life. You can even pick the
species. If you visit here, we will be happy to
take you to the nest."
I write a check and request a helmeted horn
bill, notable for one of the loudest calls in the
forest, a deep hou-hou that merges into a
cascade of shrill hee-hees and a diminuendo of
mocking ha-has. Helmeteds possess tails a
yard long and are unique for their ivorylike
casques. They have been observed to engage in
long bouts of aerial head butting, presumably
to achieve dominance, much the same as
mountain sheep. I ask that my adoptee be
named Melville, in fond memory of my first
Editor at NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, Melville Bell
Grosvenor, a tough yet tender visionary who
was not above a little head butting himself.
Some months later I received a letter from
Pilai containing photographs of a handsome
helmeted perched above the nest that enclosed
his mate, 80 feet up in a 130-foot dipterocarp
tree on Ta Po Mountain in Thailand's southern
tip. Melville's mate had walled herself in the
nest, Pilai wrote. Each day Melville brought his
mate an average of 48 figs plus an occasional
locust, cicada, or other insect. There was also a
picture of the two villagers who tended the nest
and observed Melville.
Then the bad news-because of terrorist
activity in the area, Thai military groups
moved in, and the villagers were unable to
ascertain whether Melville and his mate had
fledged a chick. I'm confident they did, even
if Melville had to butt a few heads.
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HORNBILLS